But couple of hundred thousand should be a drop in the ocean for the big wig

Updates to this story

Some could say it's been a bad year for Steve Ballmer who failed to receive his maximum bonus for the last fiscal year, despite notching the company's highest ever sales.

The CEO's pocket took a hit due to a result of bad business decisions on phones and not moving fast enough to counter AppleiPad, Reuters said.

We were feeling a tiny bit sorry for the big wig until we heard he received a cash bonus of $670,000 for the fiscal year ending in June 30. This was equal to his salary, but only half of the maximum bonus payout, according to a filing with securities regulators on Thursday.

The software giant praised its CEO for increasing sales 7 percent to a record $62.5 billion, cutting costs, launching the latest versions of Windows and Office, and pushing along cloud computing and gaming efforts.

But his pay was marked down due to the unsuccessful launch of the Kin phone, which was aimed at tweens and was dumped after three months due to poor sales.

He was also blamed for the "loss of market share in the company's mobile phone business, and the need for the company to pursue innovations to take advantage of new form factors," the report said.

Windows mobile phone software has been losing share sharply over the last few years to Apple's iPhone, Google Inc's Android and Research in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry.

The company has also been in the spotlight for the lack of a quick response to Apple's iPad, despite Ballmer claiming in July that the giant would be launching a range of tablets as soon as they were ready.

And it seems money makes Ballmer's world go round. With his bonus, Ballmer got a total direct pay package of $1.34 million for fiscal 2010, about 6 percent higher than $1.26 million the year before.

He already owns 408 million shares of the company, worth about $10 billion and he's the 16th richest American, according to Forbes magazine.

With cash status like that we don't think he'll miss a couple of thousand will he?